The concept is to take the On Demand experience which Rogers has on their cable systems (which often crashes my box) and move it online. My friend Ben Lucier has done a great job summarizing the experience and I’d agree with almost all his impressions of the system.

It’s got a lot of the features that I have on my on-demand box on my TV – so simulates that experience well. Where I think it misses the mark is moving the online experience to TV. Let me point out a few examples of ways the system could combine the online experience with the TV experience to make the system truely kick-ass, as well as solve some security issues.

One of the things that caught my eye in the list of TV shows is the category “Last Chance”. In the online world, there’s no such thing as Last Chance. If you make a show available, why wouldn’t it be available forever? This is the world of the long tail – and users expect to find everything from the just released, to an old episode of Sesame Street from 15 years ago, if you plan on bringing it to the system.

The other feature I thought could improve the experience, and make it more like my online experience is to allow comments and a social aspect. The shows are buit into a screen which shows some other relevant and related content below, but why not let the users get involved and comment on the show itself. It might not have to appear directly (I wouldn’t want to read something which gives away the surprise ending) but having a button to comment on and interact with other watchers of the show would make me feel more involved.

Connected to this was my thought: “Hey, I should give my password out to a bunch of people and let them share in my on-demand experience.” It would seem to present a problem for Rogers if they are only going to make this available to Rogers subscribers. But the easy way around that problem is to build a set of social features into the site, or even connect it with a FaceBook login. The more social features they build in the less likely users will want to share their accounts, because the account will become part of them. The more personal info I attach to the account, the less likely I’m going to share the account, in the same way I’d never share my FaceBook account with a friend.

All in all, it’s a great move forward for Rogers. This morning I watched part of a West Wing episode on my Rocket Stick (yes, it’s working now) and both that product and this shows that Rogers is ready and willing to cannibalize it’s current products and customers for the sake of new technology. They have become more adept at this in recent years – willing to take the risk. It’s impressive and can show how nimble this behemoth still is.

Update: The Rogers on Demand Twitter folks (yes, Rogers is rocking the social media these day with twitter people) pointed me to this site which shows some of the upcoming features. Upcoming features are what they say they are – upcoming. But at least they are thinking about it….

Mountain Cable was founded and owned by the Boris Family. About 5 years ago they took a different tack and hired John Piercy, an ex-AllStream and Bell executive to build a voice business. John looked back to his old company and hired Allstream to assist in building a first class home phone service. The success showed in the numbers. Upon the sale Mountain Cable had 27,000 voice customers out of 41,000 cable customers, and impressive 65% penetration rate – all those customers being a loss to Bell’s local service.

Mountain Cable was known for having excellent customer service. Friends who lived in the area confirm this. It’s rare when you talk to someone who really says “I love my cable company”. I certainly can’t say that in Toronto.

John has moved on to his next venture. Look out for Atria Networks – a combination of the local utility telecom companies which was consolidated and had an investment by Birch Hill Equity Partners, TD’s private equity arm. Good luck John.

As for Shaw’s new investment, one could argue that running a cable network a distance from the core business could be challenging. But Shaw has Big Pipe, and can connect the new service to their old network easily. Locals must be wondering whether the customer service will remain. Other observers might wonder whether Shaw will deal the subscribers to Rogers or Cogeco.

As Mark Goldberg has pointed out, and in this case I agree with him, Canadian’s already have universal access to broadband, or at least a decent connection. The real question is at what cost?

I’m sure any of the service providers would be happy to string me a fiber with GigE connection to the Yukon, but it would sure be expensive. The question of universal access to broadband is whether it’s affordable.

If you fill in the survey you’ll find there’s no question about the price you’re paying for your service. That would provide a huge amount of data for them to analyze in terms of looking at price per mbps of service in each region.

Companies like Xplornet have been serving rural areas for years, but at a connection fee of a few hundred dollars, plus a relatively expensive ongoing service compared to what we pay in the city, it’s may be considered an extreme luxury. Additionally, it’s probably fair to say that people in rural areas make less money, so asking what the income level of the people surveyed are would also be good too, so they could analyze the relative cost of the service compared to their income level.